As reported by the New York Times….
Kerri Roberts was teaching a lesson on the Reconstruction period of American History to the fifth grade at Oak Pointe Elementary School in Irmo, South Carolina. (Irmo is a suburb of Columbia, the capitol of South Carolina, and the second-largest city in the State.) Ms. Roberts gave the class a homework assignment sheet with several questions. One of the questions was:
You are there . . . You are a member of the KKK. Why do you think that your treatment of African Americans is justified?
One of the students in the Class was a 10-year-old African American boy. He was greatly upset by this question. His uncle, Tremaine Cooper, posted a picture of the assignment sheet to Facebook.
According to the Times, Ms. Roberts has been place on administrative leave while the school administration investigates the matter. It is not clear whether the leave is paid or unpaid.
The Times also notes:
The offensive assignment in South Carolina is at least the third this year that has resulted in accusations of racial insensitivity.
In February, second graders at Windsor Hills Elementary School in Los Angeles were asked to solve a word problem: “The master needed 192 slaves to work on plantation in the cotton fields. The fields could fill 75 bags of cotton. Only 96 slaves were able to pick cotton for that day. The missus needed them in the Big House to prepare for the Annual Picnic. How many more slaves are needed in the cotton fields?” (A similar assignment was given to third graders in Gwinnett County, Ga., in 2012: “If Frederick got two beatings per day,” it asked, “how many beatings did he get in one week?”)
It really makes one wonder what is going through teachers’ heads when they conjure up such assignments.
How the public would react if, say, a teacher were to give an arithmetic homework assignment or classroom quiz containing the following question:
Caesar Diocletian has ordered Evocatus Lucius Antonius to have his cohort of 600 soldiers crucify 1,800 Christians. Each of the 600 soldiers in Lucius Antonius's cohort is to crucify the same number of Christians. Two-thirds of the 600 soldiers have been taught to use three nails to crucify each Christian. The remaining one-third of the 600 soldiers have been taught to use four nails to crucify each Christian. In total, how many nails should Lucius Antonius requisition from the equipment stores in order to carry out Caesar's orders?
The young student who was troubled by the homework assignment is apparently doing OK now. According to his uncle, as reported by the TImes,
“Today he is in great spirits,” Mr. Cooper said. “He’s so proud of himself today, because he spoke up for himself.”
Wednesday, Sep 20, 2017 · 6:09:11 PM +00:00
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Rashaverak
Update: Some the commenters suggest that such an assignment may be of pedagogical value, but that the class was too young for such an assignment. This made me think that within the last year or so I had heard of a similar controversy. It turns out that the previous episode that I recalled after reading some of the comments to this diary was this one.
School assignment to argue in favor of Final Solution banned
Assignment asking NY students to argue in favor of Nazi Final Solution withdrawn and banned from being assigned again following outrage.
A homework assignment asking students in an upstate New York school district to argue for or against the Final Solution from the perspective of a Nazi official was withdrawn and will never be assigned again.
High school students in an advanced class in Oswego County were assigned a project to pretend they were members of Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Party in order to argue for or against the Holocaust’s Final Solution.
“This is an exercise on expanding your point of view by going outside your comfort zone and training your brain to logistically find the evidence necessary to prove a point, even if it is existentially and philosophically against what you believe,” according to the directions of the assignment.
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